The official colors are part of the Standard Color Reference of America, specifically Cable Nos. 75001 ("White") , 70180 ("Old Glory Red") , and 70075 ("Old Glory Blue") . Colorimetric designations for these colors were precisely specified in a 1946 paper in JOSA. When the white point is taken to have the luminous reflectance of the flag’s white, these colors can be approximated on screen as , , and , respectively. The United State Department of State uses (#FFFFFF), (#BB133E) and (#002147) in RGB color. [2]

The current dimensions of the image (version of 00:43, 14 May 2008), 1235 × 650 pixels (which represents an aspect ratio of 1.9:1.0), were chosen to allow as much as possible of the final geometric manipulations to be performed using whole numbers, avoiding the need for scaling. (This also results in each stripe being 50 pixels high.)

The versions of 04:42, 5 April 2007, and later (which were written from scratch) are ineligible for copyright and in the public domain. (Earlier versions were derived from the Open Clip Art library and were covered by the Open Clip Art license.)